The amicus brief comes after lawyers from the Alliance Defending Freedom asked the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of a ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In the ruling, the court decided a Michigan employer—a devout Christian—violated an employee’s Title VII protections by firing her after she disclosed that she was transgender and transitioning. Title VII bars employers from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission first brought the lawsuit against the Detroit-area R.G. & G.R. Funeral Home in 2014 after the woman, Aimee Stephens, filed a sex-discrimination claim after the business fired her from her job as a funeral director.

The only reason offered for her termination, Stephens alleged, was that “the public would (not) be accepting of (her) transition.” Over the course of the investigation, the EEOC also found that, while the funeral home provided male employees with clothing benefits, it allegedly did not do so for female employees.

A lower court initially ruled against the EEOC and Stephens, but the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Ohio overturned that ruling in March of this year, finding that “discrimination against employees, either because of their failure to conform to sex stereotypes or their transgender and transitioning status, is illegal under Title VII.”

Bryant was one of three Republican governors to sign onto the amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to deny such protections to transgender people; Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin and Maine Gov. Paul LePage also signed. The other 13 signees were Republican attorneys generals. Like Mississippi, Bevin and LePage’s states have Democratic attorneys general.

Bryant’s office did not return a call for comment. Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood’s spokeswoman, Margaret Ann Morgan, confirmed to the Jackson Free Press that Hood had no involvement in Bryant’s decision to join the petition.

The Meaning of ‘Sex’

In the brief, Bryant and the others argue that the high courts should overturn the 6th Circuit’s ruling because “‘sex’ under the plain terms of Title VII does not mean anything other than biological status.”

“When Congress enacted Title VII, … the understanding of the word ‘sex’ did not include the expansion of that word to include ‘gender identity,'” the brief continues. “The term ‘gender identity,’ or as the 6th Circuit labels it, ‘transgender’ and ‘transitioning status,’ are not found in the text or legislative history of Title VII.”

In its ruling, however, the 6th Circuit pointed to Supreme Court precedent, highlighting Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, a 1989 case in which the court found that “sex” in Title VII “means that gender must be irrelevant to employment decisions.” The case involved a female employee who, as the 6th Circuit explains, “was not discriminated against for being a woman per se, but instead for failing to be womanly enough.”